- Migrating images from Aperture to Lightroom. This wasn’t a big deal but I wish it was a little simpler, more so because I had Aperture set to run via a Library/database and not the mode that’ll leave my master images alone.

- File/item/object management is different under Lightroom. This is the source for many of my woes. With my previous management setups under Windows and then later on under Linux, I kept my files in place through a directory tree of year/month/yyyymmdd - name of shoot or event. This worked fairly well as back then my needs were simple. My needs grew a little, and so I got Aperture. I learned how to deal with photos as object within a database and how to consider things like photo date to find files over file name and location on the file system.

Lightroom slightly flips things backwards on me with this. The main way to store/manage files is through a standard directory structure. Any metadata and changes made to masters and virtual copies are still stored under a database. I can reference files in collections (much in th same way you can add photos in Aperture to multiple albums), so all is not lost. This is just something I need to readjust to.

- Stacks only work when viewing photos through the file/directory view, that don’t exist under collections. This is rather annoying. The workflow I created for myself under Aperture makes use of stacks heavily. Once again this is something I need to readjust to.

- What is a master under Aperture isn’t exactly the same under Lightroom, no automatic virtual copies. Under Aperture, if you have a master image then begin to make changes to it a virtual copy is automatically created, the master will never ever allow changes to it. Aperture keeps the notion of master as a visual representation of the untouched original. Under Lightroom you can apply changes to the master all you want, no magical virtual copy is every created. The original image is never touched as all the changes are just through the database and applied to the image whenever viewed. One can also go through an undo all of the changes and be left with the original at any time. But the visual representation of a master image (the one that Aperture planted into my brain) is lost unless you undo the changes or create a virtual copy before making changes. This I feel is the biggest hurdle I’m having to deal with switching from Aperture to Lightroom.

So that’s where I’m stuck at. There are many many other things I’m really enjoying about Lightroom. It’s so much more like Photoshop, which is grand. Speedy as hell. Better idea of where I’m at in my workflow. Cleaner UI in my mind. Also much easier to backup my stuff. The database doesn’t vomit all over everything if you move files around (Aperture really enjoys vomiting with this sort of stuff!)

Mind me asking if any of the issues I listed above have been a problem for you or anyone else?

I used Lightroom for 20 of my 30 day trial and decided I liked it so I ordered it from Amazon where I knew if, somehow, before I opened the shrink wrap I could return it (that’s how cautious I was being).

I ended up keeping it, opened the shrink wrap and didn’t install it as what I had installed was later but just put in the serial number so now it’s “official.” Later the 1.3 update came out and I downloaded and installed it, no problem and it makes things faster without a doubt.

If, like me, your most important factor is the speed of your hardware, then Lightroom is the application of choice. Aperture is slow enough on this machine so that at times it’s unusable and, as I said in my post, I don’t want to change the way I use my computer simply to run one application, even an important one.

So, I can keep Lightroom running at the same time as Safari and other apps. It, like Aperture, is a memory hog but not as much of one and doesn’t slow down all that much when memory is maxed out.

The other part of this story is that I’d put a 7300 rpm internal hard disk in this machine to help Aperture and now that I’m sure that I’m sticking with lightroom I ordered yet another internal HD, this time a hitachi 250 gig model but it runs at 5400 rpm. I’m finding the 7300 rpm drive considerably hotter on my lap than my past drive which was 5400 rpm and the computer’s battery doesn’t last nearly as long on a charge, so I figured I’d put a bit more drive space in at the same time I downshifted in drive speed to keep things cooler and hopefully get my battery life back up again.

I have yet to export all of my RAWs from Aperture. Now that I own both, I’m waiting to see what Apple does with an upgrade and of course, if they upgrade Aperture in a way that allows it to run better on my computer (unlikely) I might consider it again.

The problem with this problem is that there’s not an even way to compare the two applications. I might actually like Aperture better than Lightroom if it ran as fast on this computer but in fact, its performance is so bad that that fact undermines whatever appeal the application has.

To be fair, I do like Lightroom a lot on its own merits and I might not have even considered Aperture at all had I bought Lightroom first.

Lastly, I’m not absolutely sure that the images I’m processing with Lightroom are better processed than those done with Aperture but I do know that Lightroom has some different tools that I’m finding useful and some of the same tools are done better in lightroom, for instance, the spot healing tool. LR does this far better than aperture.

Feel free to ask questions Rubin, I’m happy to help in any way that I can.

The Significant part of this is Lightroom. Had i chosen to use photoshop CS3 to edit my CR2 files i can confidently say this box would freeze like the world came to an end.

The lightness of lightroom is what is most impressive about it. I love the canon DPP software, its simple and effective but lightroom has the edge and flexibility canon DPP does not offer.

I’ve used it for over 4 months now and im loving it and guess what i got it for free as a gift. hee hee!

Nice to have options.

Great post and very interesting…. As you know, I was / have been in a similar boat, possibly the same one as a few people here ;-)

I tried Aperture, found it rather slow (even on a powerful Dual G5), and so went with Lightroom. Indeed, as well as the sluggishness of Aperture, I never did “sync” with it and found it almost too much / too busy.

With Lightroom, the UI just seemed to suit me better. I got to know my way around easier and really liked the web galleries it produced (especially the flash ones) and the ability to upload via http://FTP. Then the speed, much snappier and less of a strange on the system. I am sure I read somewhere that Aperture uses the GPU (requires a good / powerful graphics card) and Lightroom makes more use of the CPU. This may play a factor in the speed differences.

TBH, I am sure, given time, I would come to love Aperture. However, like a lot of software, I have come accustomed to it and would find it hard to change. So Lightroom is it for the mo, but I don’t plan to use it much until the update from Adobe to make it fully compatible with Leopard.

I don’t know about a universal RAW standard as RAW is linked to the sensor it comes from and each camera has a slightly different sensor and so, spec. The other piece is, each maker, for instance Canon and Nikon have different processors in the camera bodies that may have some effect on the way files are created and written.

All speculation. I really have no idea.